The Homo Novus Offspring Actualization
by NinjaNovelist
Summary: A series of oneshots depicting the Shamy as they embark on the exciting and unpredictable journey known as parenthood. Do not own TBBT.
1. Chapter 1

"What is taking so long? You'd think that in eight years of medical school these people would learn how to arrive in a timely fashion."

"Mmhmm," Amy mumbled tiredly as she allowed her head to fall back onto the pillow. Fifteen hours of labor can do that to a girl.

Barely twenty minutes a mother, and Amy felt at once dead exhausted and so deliriously happy she could fly. It had been the most grueling experience of her life, but the moment she had looked upon that slimy, squirming little lump of baby, she had been in love.

Poor Sheldon, on the other hand, looked down at his child like he hadn't quite processed the reality of the situation yet. He had stayed stone still from the moment of birth, staring bug-eyed at the infant wailing in Amy's arms, and when she had turned to him and asked if he wanted a turn he had instantly responded by requesting a cleaning.

So here they were, Sheldon sitting in a chair beside her bed, hand in hers as he continued to spout off a Christmas list of complaints. The walls were too white. The chairs were too hard. The nurses were too peppy. If it wasn't for the palm trembling ever so slightly in her grasp, Amy would have thought that his new status of fatherhood had done little to affect him thus far.

Just as Sheldon was going on a tangent of how the pathogens of inferior-minded women who had birthed here previously would surely infect their progeny, Amy opened her eyes and turned her head to face him. "It's okay to be nervous, you know."

Sheldon halted mid-sentence to look at her, and she could just make out his blue eyes shining with unbridled fear before diverting his gaze downward, like he knew what she could see.

"That is frankly ridiculous," he said faintly as he toyed around with her wedding ring. "Sheldon Lee Cooper does not get nervous."

Amy only smiled and squeezed his fingers in silent reassurance.

Minutes passed in pensive quiet, and still no baby. Amy knew her husband was getting increasingly agitated with each tick of the clock, though outwardly he showed no sign as he stared straight ahead and continued his habitual glide of his thumb over her knuckles. His ministrations had nearly lulled her into a light sleep when his hidden doubts abruptly pierced the evening air. "Will I be a good father, Amy?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but was prevented by the door swinging open to at last present the main event.

"And here we are!" The nurse singsonged cheerily as she pushed a bassinet inside (Sheldon's derisive glance to Amy spelled her out a single word like a neon billboard: _peppy_). "This wingless angel has been waiting _very _patiently to see her parents."

Sheldon instantly straightened in his seat and pulled on his shirt, like he was on a first date and wanted to look his best. The little girl yawned in her sleep and tilted her head away, clearly unimpressed.

The new father cleared his throat, trying to look unaffected by the child wrapped in a hospital blanket just a foot away. "I, uh… resent your implication that my daughter is a likely fictional creature from religious lore. I can assure you that she does _not_ come from heaven, but from the duel effort of my spermatic fluid and my wife's reproductive bowels after we-"

"_Sheldon_," Amy hissed harshly, mindful of the baby. But she knew that Sheldon was feeling out of his depths with this unfamiliar territory, and was coping with the only two things he could unquestionably rely on: his intelligence and severe bluntness.

Swallowing at his wife's tone, a chastised Sheldon turned again to the nurse. "Your services are no longer needed. Thank you and good night."

Amy sighed, knowing that was the best she was going to get from him, but the nurse's cheshire grin didn't even falter. "Of course. I'll leave you three alone, just give a buzz if you need anything."

As promised, the woman then turned tail and walked promptly out of the room. But Sheldon remained in his spot far after the door swung shut, eyes locked on the cradle before him.

"Sheldon?" He didn't respond. "Sheldon, you can't live your whole life without holding your daughter."

His head snapped towards hers, gaze sharp and metallic. "I could try. I can easily perform my paternal duties without laying a finger on her. You satisfy her immediate needs of feeding and changing and other forms of physical nurturing, while I support her intellectually and psychologically from a safe distance-"

"That's not how you want to do it and you know it," Amy said. She gestured towards their child as she slept peacefully on. "If you can handle the love and care of making a baby, you can handle that of holding one."

Sheldon's gaze traveled to the bassinet, holding it there for a long moment before returning to his wife. Then with a quick pat of his free hand onto the one held by his other, he let her go and rose from his chair to approach the baby girl.

He stood before his daughter almost timidly, staring in a mixture of awe and uncertainty. He extended his hands and moved them closer and closer… before retracting them and trying again from a different angle, and the cycle would continue.

"Don't worry, Sheldon, you've done this before," Amy soothed. "You won't drop her."

Sheldon reeled back as if he'd been burned. "This is entirely different from holding my nephew for two minutes! This one- this one's _mine_. I'm going to be responsible for everything this child grows up to be, I'm going to influence every facet of her life, so how can you just sit there and claim that someone like me isn't going to damage this perfect little-"

The subject of the conversation chose at that very moment to awaken with a whimper, then a wail. Sheldon instantly reverted to panic mode. "What do I do, Amy? How do you turn it off?"

"Sheldon!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Without another thought Sheldon hurriedly scooped his daughter up and held her to his chest, awkwardly rocking his body back and forth in a clumsy attempt to placate her. The baby kept on screaming.

"Shh, shh, it's okay," he began softly, head bent close the girl's face. Amy didn't dare breathe, quietly witnessing the first real encounter between dad and daughter. "Uh…"

Staring down at his child's sobbing face, Sheldon looked as though he wanted nothing more than to end anything that could cause her pain. Slowing his movements to a gentle sway, Sheldon shockingly broke his own rule when he opened his mouth to sing.

"_Soft kitty, warm kitty…_"

The cries began to soften.

"_Little ball of fur…_"

Her face smoothed out from its previously scrunched expression of crying.

"_Happy kitty, sleepy kitty…_"

Her eyes cracked open, revealing her eyes for the first time. Sheldon's voice faltered, and for a moment Amy thought that despite his compulsive need for closure he would forget to finish the song.

But at last: "_Purr, purr, purr_."

The wails were now nothing more than sniffles, and Sheldon was nothing more than a puddle of hippy-dippy emotions at the feet of his little girl. Completely enraptured, he raised a hand to wipe a stray tear from her cheek as he wandered over to Amy and sat on the edge of the bed beside her. His eyes never left the child in his arms once.

"Hi," he said softly to his daughter.

Amy rested her chin on her husband's shoulder, and together they took in all of their baby's features. A smattering of brown hair; one tiny button nose; rosebud lips that mirrored Sheldon's; a striking chin undoubtedly inherited from his mother; and the grayish-blue eyes of a newborn, shaped exactly like Amy's own.

"She's gorgeous," he whispered, turning to Amy for just a moment before he was drawn back to study the face of his baby girl. "She looks like you."

Amy was sure that the beam on her face could light planets.

She looped an arm through his and Sheldon shifted back so he was sitting fully on the bed, her cheek now on his shoulder. "She still needs a name."

The two had planned everything concerning the birth to the last detail, but the one thing they could never agree on was a name. Amy's picks were too romantic in Sheldon's opinion, while Sheldon's were quite odd, as they were often names of science fiction characters.

"Amelia," Sheldon said. Amy glanced up in surprise at his choice. "She's one of the companions on Doctor Who."

_Here we go again_. "I told you, Sheldon, no character names. That means no Uhura's, no Padme's-"

"For the record, I had suggested Leia, not Padme," Sheldon clarified. "You honestly think I would name my child for someone from the _prequels_?"

After shaking his head in exasperation, Sheldon explained further. "You want a fairytale kind of name, I want a sci-fy kind of name. Amelia Pond is both. She's intelligent, strong in her convictions, unbelievably patient, always loving-" he cut himself off for a moment, suddenly growing shy. "Plus in the show they usually called her Amy."

Sheldon's attention was back on the baby to hide his embarrassment, but just then Amy's was solely on him, so touched she wanted to cry. If he needed Doctor Who as an excuse to name their child after her, she wasn't going to question it.

She leaned over so she could run a hand along the side of her daughter's face, and trying to hide the new thickness to her voice said, "That sounds perfect."

Sheldon turned to face her, a slow grin stealing his features. "Really?"

Amy nodded with a matching expression. She had no idea what she had done to deserve all this, so she had only the promised usage of a George Foreman grill, the threat of a hidden dirty sock, and the assurance that coitus was off the table to thank for where she is now. "Really."

Her husband swooped down and planted a smacking kiss to her temple, and the two exchanged looks of pure, unadulterated joy before returning to the teeny tiny bundle that had changed their lives forever.

"Well then, Amelia Farrah Cooper, you are the first in a line of intellectually superior, benign overlords to guide humanity to a brighter tomorrow." Sheldon lifted the baby up higher to bestow a kiss to her head as well. "You might want to hold off on that 'till you're a bit older, but I have faith in your patience."

He smiled over at Amy. "You _were_ named for the Girl Who Waited, after all."


	2. Chapter 2

**So the previous chapter had been a tumblr oneshot that I decided to expand upon, because one Shamy baby story simply isn't enough. And because of that, double update this time! I'm hoping to update this often, but no guarantees.**

**Also, this fic takes place a few years in the future, hence the references to Star Wars movies yet to be released. What I've put below is absolutely NO indication of what the actual new films will be like, just came from my own wacky imagination. Enjoy! **

As they began the harrowing four flight trek up to their apartments, Leonard turned to face his taller friend. "So have you seen the trailer for Episode IX yet?"

Sheldon gave him his signature snort of derision. "Have I seen the trailer… have I heard of Einstein's theory of relativity? Have I earned a record number of nine restraining orders from various washed-up celebrities?"

"Okay, okay, I get your point," Leonard muttered irritably. "What did you think?"

"Well, apart from the special effects, I still don't see any reason why Disney had felt that they could improve upon the original series in the first place," Sheldon began. "Mark Hamill is no Yoda; his lightsaber skills do not improve with age. And resurrecting Darth Vader? Seriously? Much as I love James Earl Jones, in what universe does that make sense?"

"Could be worse," his friend reasoned. "They could've recast Hayden Christensen in the role."

Sheldon stopped dead in his tracks, daring a glance over to Leonard. The two shuddered in perfect sync.

Once they reached their floor, Leonard sighed and pulled his key from his pocket. "Well, see ya." He crossed the hall and was in the process of unlocking when he realized Sheldon had not yet moved. Turning around he saw his friend staring at the door to his apartment like it was the entrance to Mordor. Then recalling who was within those walls, perhaps that wasn't far from the truth. "Something wrong?"

Sheldon whipped back to stare at him, then back to the door, then back to him again. "Nooooo," he began shakily. "I just… realized your home is probably in an atrocious state of chaos right now, given Penny's previously endless infractions to the laws of cleanliness." He made a beeline for Leonard's door. "I'll just help tidy up a little-"

"Wait, wait, hold on," Leonard interrupted with a hand pushing Sheldon back. "You're scared to face her, aren't you?"

The physicist looked as if he wanted to argue, but knew that it was fruitless lying to the person who knew him better than anyone save for one. He slumped forward. "Last night she threw my collector's edition model Batmobile at me because I said she looked tired."

Inwardly Leonard sighed at his friend's lack of understanding the female mind even after three years of marriage, but outwardly he winced in sympathy. "She didn't hurt you, did she?"

"Oh I didn't even have to duck, she has terrible aim." He glanced surreptitiously back at his door, as if afraid she could hear them. "She's a scientist, not a softball player."

"And right now she's a new mother on maternity leave with no one to keep her company all day but a temperamental infant," Leonard told him. "That's bound to put anyone on wit's end."

"I know, and I applaud her perseverance. But," he sighed heavily, looking again to the door but this time distinctly in longing. "I miss my wife."

Melting a little at his buddy's forlorn expression, Leonard walked past him to the other side of the hall. "Well then," he opened the door, gesturing inside. "Go find her again."

Sheldon peeked through and gulped nervously, but obliged. He got as far the doorway when he began to falter yet again, looking like when someone was in his spot, not quite sure where his place in the world was anymore.

Leonard breathed gustily through his nose, looking to the ceiling. "Want _me_ to come along?"

His friend immediately perked up. "That would be perfect!" and no longer hesitated to enter his home.

The bespectacled homunculus reluctantly trailed behind. _I am so going to regret this._

Making their way to the back of the apartment, the two scientists halted in front of the bedroom that had once belonged to Leonard. Miles more confident with his best friend at his side, Sheldon opened the door while simultaneously performing his usual ritual.

_Knock, knock, knock. _"Amy."

_Knock, knock, knock. _"Amy."

_Knock, knock-_

"SHELDON I SWEAR I AM GOING TO RIP APART YOUR MAN BITS UNTIL YOU CAN NEVER SIT DOWN AGAIN."

Yep, already regretting this.

There was a long, pregnant pause, rife with tension, before-

_Knock. _"Amy."

The woman in question wheeled around, five feet and four inches of such utter menace that both men recoiled in fear. She was still in her robe, hair in disarray and glasses slightly askew, bouncing little Amelia in arms as she chewed on her fist like her mother's rage was the most ordinary thing in the world. Leonard shuddered at the thought that maybe to her, it was.

Amy's stance relaxed a bit at the sight that they had company. "Hi Leonard."

The experimental physicist approached her in the exact way that Mary Cooper had taught him to deal with her son: like a skittish faun. "Hey Amy. How are you?"

"Frustrated. Defeated." she threw a scathing glare at her husband. "_Tired_."

Sheldon dared a step forward with his arms in the air, already prepared to protect himself from the onslaught that was certain to come. "Listen-"

"No _you_ listen, hotshot." She whirled around to grab something from the changing table, waving it in his face. "What is this?"

Sheldon blinked. "Amy, you have a doctorate in biology. I'd hope that you're intelligent enough to recognize our daughter's pacifier in your hand."

"Well, I most certainly _did _recognize it on the floor this morning. Honestly, you disinfect yourself when you're forced to touch a suspicious looking doorknob, yet you didn't think to pick up the thing that would be in your child's mouth?"

"It was two in the morning!" Sheldon cried. "You know my brain doesn't function to its highest standard when my REM cycle is disturbed."

"Oh, I'll give you something that'll disturb your precious cycle right now-"

Almost as if she could sense the discord between her parents (and perhaps she could, Leonard thought; she was _their_ child, after all), Amelia's face began to screw up just before the first of her cries resounded throughout the tiny room.

Both mother and father halted all disagreements at the sight and sound of their baby upset. "Oh honey, no," Sheldon soothed, his Texan drawl bleeding through as he took the little girl and cradled her to his chest. "It's alright, Lia. Mommy and Daddy are fine."

"Not so sure about Mommy," Amy said, collapsing into the nearby rocking chair. She pushed her glasses up her face as she ran a hand over her haggard eyes, and when she removed it there were tears glistening in them. "I'm a failure."

Sheldon, lips against the crown of Amelia's head as she started settling down, looked up with eyes aching for his wife. "Amy-"

"I've been trying to get her to nap for hours, couldn't do that. Before that I tried nursing her, couldn't do that either. Now I even make her cry, while you're the one who has her feeling safe and loved." She removed her glasses and put them on the nightstand, weeping in earnest now. "It hasn't even been three months and I can't manage being a mother."

Leonard made a move to go to her, but surprisingly Sheldon beat him to it. Taking a step forward, he crouched down beside Amy so that he was looking up at her, his eyes shining and serious. "You're right."

Leonard didn't even try to hide his groan. Sheldon ignored him.

"It _has _been almost three months," he clarified. "In fact, it'll be three in exactly nine days. And you know what happens then?"

Amy nodded, expression blank and vacant despite the watery eyes. "My maternity leave will be over."

"Exactly." His gaze turned with fondness to his daughter as he nuzzled the baby's head. "Then it'll be my turn to care for our little genius."

Sometimes Leonard looked at his best friend like he was the eighth wonder of the world. In all their time together Sheldon had hugged him a grand total of four times, but when it came to his daughter he dished out his affections like penny candy. Even now he was staring down at his girl with a look of pure love meant particularly for her, dubbed by Penny as his "megawatt koala face."

The biologist chuckled quietly as she swiped a hand under her eyes. "You sure you won't mind working from home?"

Sheldon rolled his eyes. "Please. A few months and Lia here will be smarter and more engaging than half the University staff. She's already beat out the geologists."

Amy grew quiet for a long moment, staring at nothing once again. "Am I a horrible person for wanting to go back to work?"

The physicist tilted his head in thought. "No. You've been working hard at being a mother, and doing a wonderful job of it, may I add." Rising to his feet he took Amy by the hand and pulled her into a one-armed embrace, nose buried in her hair, and Leonard wondered if perhaps their Shelly knew more about this husband stuff than he had originally been given credit. "You're just worn out right now, but give it a few weeks in boring old biology and you'll be begging for Fridays to come, when we switch places and it'll be my turn to deal with the Neanderthals of the science world."

Leonard tried really hard not to take issue with that comment. Really, really hard.

Amy stared up at her husband before standing on tiptoe to press a kiss to his cheek. "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

"I'm sorry I didn't pick up the binky."

"Forgiven."

"Likewise."

Clearly overjoyed at seeing her parents make up, Amelia broke into a toothless smile and began waving one tiny hand enthusiastically through the air. Amy caught it and smoothed her larger palm over the baby's, pushing back against it Tarzan style.

Sheldon looked on in awed fascination. "Her hands look more like yours every day."

All this Leonard observed with nothing short of amazement, having trouble believing this was the same man he had met over fifteen years prior. He had been certain the man would die alone, shouting the quadratic equation at kids from his front porch (or the window of his psychiatric ward), and yet here he was, a girl in each arm.

Having seen enough, Leonard quietly bowed out and finally made his way to his own apartment. He reached the hallway just as Penny was coming up the stairs from work.

"Hey, what were you doing at the home of Whackadoodle and company?" his wife asked.

Leonard said nothing, only staring straight back at the beautiful woman, the exact kind he had been told his whole life he would never be able to get. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he pulled her forward and planted a sweet, heartfelt kiss to her perfect lips.

Penny smiled up at him when he pulled away, practically glowing. "Any particular reason for your good behavior today?" She narrowed her eyes teasingly. "Did you buy another time machine?"

"No," Leonard replied with a shrug. Then he grinned again, placing a hand over Penny's middle, where if you looked close enough would notice the slightest bump. "Just can't wait 'till we get our own little genius."

Penny put her own hands on top of his, returning the smile before grabbing it and pulling him into their apartment. She glanced back, just as radiant as the day they met. "Smart and beautiful, right?"

"Absolutely."

**~0~0~0~0~0~**

"Well, Miss Amelia, you've caused quite a stir in your brief time on this earth," Sheldon murmured as he swung rhythmically back and forth in the rocking chair, his little girl half asleep in his arms. "I would expect nothing less from my offspring, but why don't you go easier on your mom, alright? She tries so hard for you and me, so the least we can do is allow her to catch up on the recommended eight hours a night of sleep."

His friends would deny the verity of his claim, but he would swear to the God he refused to believe in that he saw his daughter nod in agreement, her eyes focused on his but drooping more by the minute.

Sheldon was still marveling at how much a baby can change in just a few short months. She had gotten bigger, obviously, but also a bit pudgier as well (which he, of course, found just adorable). Her hair had grown enough to reveal that it shared his sandy hue, but her eyes were shaping out to be all Amy's, beginning to shift from newborn blue to the soft spruce green he loved so much.

He watched quietly as said eyes fluttered lower and lower until they at last shut completely. A small sigh escaped the baby's lips as she finally drifted to sleep, but Sheldon still spent a minute more in the chair, simply rocking and holding and gazing.

When he eventually brought himself to stand, he placed a feather-soft kiss to her forehead and set her down in her crib. "Sleep well, little lady."

Sheldon stealthily padded his way from the room, and after softly shutting the door behind him just about bounced to his and Amy's bedroom, giddy with the gratification of having just spent time with his daughter and the excitement of the imminent time about to be spent with his wife.

But when he reached the threshold he found Amy dead asleep, having tumbled into bed without a care in the world. She was very much invading the sacred space that was his side of the bed, yet for once Sheldon didn't mind in the least, stopped in his tracks as he took a moment to study her.

Amy was sprawled across their bed, one arm slung across her forehead and the other dangling just barely off the edge of the bed. She hadn't even bothered removing her robe, the half of her face not concealed by her unkempt hair still blotchy from her recent crying, and there were bags under her eyes from lack of sleep as well. Her mouth hung open, and her snores sounded akin to a jackhammer ripping through a thick layer of concrete.

She was perfect.

Once he was sure he had every detail of this image seared into his eidetic memory, Sheldon quickly entered to room, changed into his pajamas, carefully placed the glasses forgotten in the nursery onto Amy's bedside table, and crossed over to his end of the bed. She turned her head towards him as he did so, drawn to him even in her sleep. Sheldon climbed in himself with a contented sigh after a long day, opting out of his usual sleeping position on his back in favor of his side, one arm tucked beneath his head as he stared across at his wife.

He hadn't been lying when he told Lia about how much Amy tries for them. For him she'd been doing so even from their time as just friends, always putting his needs above her own. Even during the time that he refused to do the same for her out of fear of his own feelings, or in other words (Sheldon gulped at the thought) sheer stupidity, she had remained steadfast in her love for him throughout.

Once he had at last let his mind catch up with his heart he tried his best to make up for lost time, but no amount of flowers and dinners and declarations and lovemaking could erase the look she still got at times, staring at Sheldon like she's waiting for the bazinga and for him to return to his old ways. Having Amelia had helped things some, but right now, overwhelmed with the charge of caring for another human being through the day, on her own, Amy still seemed to be getting the short end of the stick.

Sheldon reached a hand over to gently brush the hair from her face before trailing down and resting it on her cheek, a silent apology for years of a relationship based on a mutual admiration that skewed in his favor, even now it seemed. Amy stirred beneath his touch and slowly cracked her eyes open to meet his own. Sheldon wrenched his hand away immediately.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," he said quickly. "Go back to sleep- but only if you want to, of course. I promise I won't disturb you again."

Even in the dim lighting, Sheldon could see Amy staring at him long and hard, a sad look in her gaze. "Have I been that terrible to you?"

Her voice sounded so small it made him want to say anything to get his Amy back to her old confident self, but he was nothing if not an honest man. "You've thrown things at me. And yelled at me. And threatened to snap the ears off my Mr. Spock vintage action figure if I suggested one more time you condition yourself to acquire Vulcan hearing to listen for the baby's cries."

Amy's eyes shifted away a moment in shame, but soon turned back to him once again. She took his left hand in her right. "You know it's okay for us to fight sometimes, right?"

Sheldon nodded sagely, returning the gesture by grabbing her other hand. Both pairs rested on the pillows between them, intertwined like two branches of the same tree. "I do. Just… not in front of Lia, okay?"

The events of today had proved to Sheldon that his daughter had inherited his fragile heart. And thinking back to all the times he buried himself in textbooks or video games to distract from his parents' shouting match the next room over, and how it had taken years of being with Amy to convince him that he would not follow down the same path, he knew he never wanted to subject sweet little Amelia to the same.

Amy looked at him like she knew just what was going on in his head- as she always did. "Deal. And I hereby concede not to get upset with you as much."

Sheldon grinned at her phrasing, thinking back on the old days of their Relationship Agreement. They still had one (because he still refused to conform to the conventional idea of chaos over order. And besides, the contract had gotten them this far), but it had grown much shorter and less confining as he was changed little by little for the better, by his wife and for her. And he now acknowledged the fact that in some cases verbal agreements were just as binding, especially among two people who trusted each other as much as they did. "Seconded. And I hereby vow to place a more concerted effort into helping you care for our offspring so as to avoid you getting upset in the first place."

"Also seconded."

Sheldon smiled across to his wife, feeling a glow warm him from the inside out as he lifted their joined hands to stroke the downward slope of her jaw. "I love you, Amy."

In lieu of a reply, Amy slipped her arms around his neck to kiss him full on the mouth, knocking him onto his back. Now almost completely on top of him, she broke away to grant him one of her most disarming grins before resting her head on his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat. Sheldon wrapped both arms snugly around her frame, smiling in perfect content.

Maybe in the future Amy would worry about not being loved, but it wouldn't be tonight.


	3. Chapter 3

"If mass is the measure of its energy content, and I hope you came prepared," Sheldon read. "Then Einstein's theory of mass-energy equivalence is e equals mc…"

"Squaewed," Amelia answered around a thumb in her mouth.

Sheldon smiled down at his daughter, seated in his lap. "Right! Okay, let's turn the page."

The girl reached forward with little one-year-old hands to flip through one of her favorite picture books, _Baby's First Guide to Basic Physics_, before turning her head to stare up at her father expectantly. She looked just like him, all limbs and chestnut hair pulled back by a tiny barrette, but with Amy's green eyes. Perfection incarnate.

The physicist cleared his throat dramatically as he continued his tale. "Now if you can get this next one, you're clearly very bright: c equals three times ten to the eighth meters per second is…"

Amelia grinned, the same face he would make when he knew just what the right answer was. "The spee' of ligh'!"

"That's my girl." Sheldon dropped a quick kiss to her head. "Keep it up and you'll be in college by the time you're six. Your Uncle Leonard may think that his son is all that, but we both know the smartest toddler in the world is…"

The girl plucked her thumb from her mouth with a resounding pop. "Amewia Coopah."

It was amazing how from the mouth of an obnoxious coworker a speech impediment was positively grating on the ears, but from that of one little girl it was nothing short of precious. "You're three for three, my dear."

Just then the door swung open, and upon sight of the person who entered Amelia's face lit up like a sunbeam. "Mama!"

The moment that Amy glanced up from removing her purse, Sheldon knew something was off. Her eyes couldn't seem to focus on anything, only sparing the two on the couch a quick look before shifting to something else.

"Hey, baby," She said, looking like she was far, far away from the here and now, rather than devoted to giving her undivided attention to their daughter like usual. "Did you, uh, have fun today?"

Amelia nodded vigorously before returning to the herculean task of turning to the next page of the storybook. Sheldon, however, kept his gaze focused on his wife. "Amy?"

But the biologist didn't even reply as she turned and headed into the kitchen to set the kettle on the stove, her shoulders rigid and tense as she reached into the cabinet to retrieve their box of assorted teas.

Hot beverage. Not a good sign.

Gently removing Amelia from his lap and settling her back on the couch with her book, Sheldon rose and followed his wife to the kitchen.

"How was your appointment?" he asked, trying to deflect the situation for now by distracting Amy from whatever was bothering her. Hopefully she would come to him in her own time.

But his question seemed only to distress her further, freezing her in place a moment as she was retrieving her favorite yellow mug, before she shook herself out of it and continued on as if everything was fine. So it must have had something to do with the doctor's visit she had just come from, even though Amy's medical record had always been stellar…

All at once a host of reasons it had gone horribly wrong invaded Sheldon's head like an army taking the citadel, each wave worse than the last. Was she ill? Did she have a heart condition? Did she have cancer? Had she contracted premature Alzheimer's?

In two long strides Sheldon had rounded the kitchen island and swung his wife around, clutching her shoulders desperately. "Are you dying?!"

Amelia's head shot up from the couch at her father's alarmed tone, face scrunched up in puzzlement. Amy quickly sent her a tight smile in reassurance before taking her husband by the arm and pulling him further into the kitchen. "No Sheldon, I am not dying." She was clearly irritated, but Sheldon didn't even care because anything was better than the stiff lack of emotion from before. "And tell me, how else do you plan on traumatizing our child?"

He made a face at her, but upon sight of her hunched posture and arms wrapped protectively around her it quickly dissolved to true concern. He ran his hands down her arms soothingly. "What's wrong, Amy?"

"Nothing's wrong." She blew a heavy breath from her mouth. "At least, nothing _should _be wrong. In fact, everything should be just right. But what do you do when something right happens, but you're afraid it's the wrong time? I mean, you were happy when this right thing happened before, but that had been with extensive discussing and planning, and it had… _felt _right. The right time. But what if you don't know if you're ready for two right things at once? What if you're terrified someone you love isn't ready for two right things either? What if-"

"Amy." His breath was coming up short, his heart pounding a staccato beat like his bongos. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

She bit her lip, shifting her weight to her other leg, and then for the first time since she walked in the door looked straight into his eyes. "I'm pregnant."

Sheldon could do little more than stare at her, wide-eyed and deathly still. "What?"

Amy sighed. "In the words of the great Dr. Sheldon Cooper, 'My uterus has come down with a baby.'" Her gaze flitted away again nervously, and her next words started coming out in a jumbled rush. "And I know it wasn't planned, heck we haven't even talked about having a second child yet, and Lia's not even two years old yet so we'll have to somehow manage raising two kids under three, and eventually we may have to talk of moving out of this apartment and I know how much you dislike change and anything that will interrupt your schedule-"

She was cut off by her husband surging forward and throwing his arms around her so suddenly she was knocked back a step, kissing every spot on her head and face available to him.

"Do you mean it?" he asked against her ear as he pulled back to look at her, feeling a grin of childlike excitement smear across his cheeks. "We're having another baby?"

"If the tests are to be believed, then yes." A tiny smile graced Amy's face, and Sheldon realized how much he had missed it in just these last few minutes. "And we both know science never lies."

He kissed her deeply then, arms tightening around her body as he leaned back to lift her off her feet. Of course, physical strength had never been his strongest attribute so he was soon forced to place her back on the ground, but the beam on his face hadn't lessened an inch.

He was just about to go in for another kiss when he felt a sudden tugging on his pant leg. They both looked down to settle on a pair of wide green eyes glancing first to the owner's father, then the mother, a question in them as plain to her parents as if she had shouted it.

With a bright smile Amy detangled herself from Sheldon's embrace and bent down to lift Amelia into her arms, automatically shifting her to one hip so her free hand could go to her middle. "Don't worry, sweetheart." Her eyes met her husband's, the stereotypical pregnancy glow already making a reappearance. "Everything's all right."


	4. Chapter 4

"Now, _where_ is that Amelia?" Amy asked nobody as she sat spread on the couch. "I can't seem to find her anywhere!"

A giggle erupted from not too far away, and Amy had to stifle a few chuckles herself as she continued to feign ignorance. "Well I hope she shows up soon, or else I won't be able to give her the special surprise I've been planning…"

A toddler leaped up from behind her mother's mountain of a belly, hands planted on the spot where her sibling grew beneath and a grin stretching from ear to ear. "Boo!"

Amy gasped dramatically, hand pressed to her chest. "Amelia, there you are! You scared me."

The little girl smiled smugly- looking more like her father than ever- as pudgy fingers poked at the rounded stomach before her. "I got you, Mommy."

"Yes you did, baby." A saddened look crossed Amy's face, knowing it wouldn't be long before Amelia wasn't her baby anymore. A new one would be coming along very soon while little Lia was getting bigger by the day, just shy of two and a half years old. Where had the time gone?

"My surprise?" Amy snapped out of her daze to look into her daughter's angelically hopeful face, and despite her melancholy a smile bloomed on her lips, at first one of tender affection that quickly turned mischievous.

"That's right, I did promise a surprise, didn't I?" She tapped her chin in thought. "Well, a deal's a deal…"

The mother jerked as far up as her pregnant body would allow to grab the small girl and pull her forward so she could blow a series of raspberries onto her cheek. Amelia squealed with laughter as she attempted to wiggle out from Amy's hold, but the biologist was having none of that as she hugged her baby to her chest.

Amelia looked around desperately in search of a savior, and her eyes landed on the man at the other end of the room, fixated on his computer. "Daddy! Help!"

"Mmhmm." Sheldon didn't even turn around, entirely focused on the paper he was working on. The man was, as he himself liked to put it, 'in the zone', and even his child's screeching pleas put barely more than a dent into his level of concentration.

Allowing her daughter a reprieve from the sudden assault of affection, Amy turned to her husband. "Care for a break, Sheldon?"

Apparently what it took was a double attack from both wife and daughter to snap the physicist from his trance enough to turn his head to the side (Amy filed away the discovery for future reference). "This article is due to be sent in to _Physics Today _in T-minus forty-eight hours and I have only proof-read it four times so far. I don't have time for a break."

"You sure about that, Sheldon?" Amy asked as she held Amelia steady on her own two feet on the couch beside her. "Because I think you could make some time for this little cutiepie, right Lia?"

"Yeah!" the toddler replied, a giggle muffled by her two little hands.

Amy could see Sheldon rolling his eyes at the pair, but she also didn't miss the sneaking smile he was failing to hide as he turned fully back around in his seat.

Just then the door burst open and a certain astrophysicist shot inside, phone in hand. "Guys, guys, guess what happened?"

"You forgot about the proper social protocol of knocking before entering another's home?" Sheldon asked, eyes never leaving his computer screen.

"Well how can I relax when my best friend and former love of my love just officially became parents?" Raj nearly screeched.

Amy sat up straight at the news. "Really? When?"

"Just now, look!" Raj rushed at his heavily pregnant friend, and Amy set her daughter onto the floor in favor of the Indian's cell phone.

Pictured were the Wolowitz duo-turned-trio, Howard in all his bowl cut glory and Bernadette smiling brightly as she held up an older, coffee-skinned infant, staring straight at the camera with a confused frown. The caption read as follows:

_Greetings from New Delhi! It's eight in the morning here, and I'm proud to say we have liftoff on Operation Parenthood. Meet Hiranya Deborah Wolowitz; she's clearly happy to meet you._

"Oh, she's beautiful!" Amy gushed. "Her parents are so lucky."

"I am, aren't I?" Raj said with a sigh.

That line prompted even Sheldon to turn around and stare at him in bewilderment.

"What? I was the one who suggested they adopt as a compromise so Bernadette doesn't have to put her career on hold in any capacity, nor go through the woes and pains of childbirth…" Amy raised a calculated eyebrow at him, and Raj grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. Not to mention they decided to get a child from my home country. I am just as much the parent as they are!"

"I'm quite certain the state of California would disagree," Sheldon deadpanned.

"Come on dude, just let me have this one. Emily's not interested in kids and, much as I love her, the idea of my blood and gore loving, knife-enthusiast of a fiancé with a child _terrifies_ me. This is the closest I'm going to get to fatherhood, and I intend to live as vicariously through my Indian foster daughter as I can before she gets sick of me and can't stand the sight of my face."

"Wouldn't be much different from all the other women you'd been involved with in the past," Sheldon said before turning back again to his work.

Amy chose to ignore her husband's unhelpful comments as she returned Raj's phone. "Well please send our congratulations along with your own."

"Will do." It was at that exact moment that Amelia toddled over to greet her Uncle Raj with a hug to the knees (she had been too engrossed in a 500-piece jigsaw of the Empire State Building to do so earlier), and the man smiled fondly at her as he tousled her hair. "You know, back when it was just the guys, I was convinced that no woman would ever spare us a second look. Now here we are, each with a beautiful lady at our sides, planning futures and starting families. Life is pretty crazy, huh?"

Sheldon had stopped typing, and Amy knew he was listening even though he would never admit to it. Raj failed to notice as he stooped to bop Amelia on the nose. "Well I'd better go. Still need to tell Leonard and Penny the news. 'Night." And with one last pat to Amy's shoulder, Raj was out the door.

The moment he left, Sheldon rose from his seat for the first time since he woke up and went to open the fridge and stare unseeingly at the contents. Knowing what he was up to, Amy hid a smirk as she leaned over to grab a magazine and wait. He took his sweet time, but as expected, Sheldon had eventually meandered over to his wife and maneuvered her legs around so he could sit in his spot, her feet in his lap.

"I thought you didn't have time for a break."

Sheldon shrugged evasively as his fingers deftly worked to massage the pains in her ankles away. "A, uh… spot just opened up for you."

Amy bit her lip knowingly. "Well, I thank you for taking the time out of your very busy schedule, Dr. Cooper."

The pace of Sheldon's hands began to relax, now only gently sweeping in soothing circles along the ridge of her foot. His head slowly turned to meet Amy's eyes, a small yet beautiful smile quirking his lips. "One more month," he breathed.

"Yes." Amy nodded with eyes shining as she placed a hand over her middle. "One month until we have our second little homo novus daughter."

Sheldon's gaze shifted briefly to Amelia as she put the last few pieces of her puzzle together before returning to Amy, face now practically beaming. He placed his own hand on top of hers, splaying his long fingers out so he could caress the spot where his child was. "Our daughter."


	5. Chapter 5

It was abundantly clear to any who saw her in action that Amy Farrah Fowler-Cooper was not your average American wife and mother. She would work hard in her lab all day psychologically scarring an array of lower animal species, publish a few papers on her findings, and, if she was lucky enough for it to be dissection day, bring a few eyeballs home to poke and prod at with her kids while her husband observed from a safe, hygienic distance.

Today, however, she was assuming the role of supermom as she prepared dinner, worked on the half-finished proposal for the University on her laptop, tended to a fussy one-year-old, and argued with her mother on the phone all at once.

"Of course we want to come see you, Mother-" (eyeroll) "Sheldon and I are just very busy between work and raising your granddaughters, but as soon as we have a weekend open- hold on a minute, Josie's crying."

Putting her cell down, Amy shifted the whimpering baby a little more comfortably on her hip as she grabbed a pacifier. "I know, sweetheart." She cast a wary glance to the abandoned telephone before turning back to Josie and whispering, "I don't want to visit Grandma either."

The girl nuzzled her head into her mother's shoulder, sucking on the binky contentedly, and as she locked big blue eyes onto Amy's the biologist felt a sudden wave of love wash over for her little Josephine Mary, named for both her father's mother and grandmother and a Cooper through and through. Sheldon had once pulled out some old photographs of himself and his siblings when they were small and the likeness of Josie to her Aunt Missy was uncanny, with dark hair and a face you just knew would be breaking hearts in a few years' time. With the Cooper looks came the Cooper temper, it seemed, but also that same hidden sweetness Amy could never seem to be mad at for long.

"That's not fair! I want a refund!"

"You mean a rematch?"

"That too!"

Amy was torn between exasperation of having to break up the surfacing fight and relief of having an excuse to hang up on her mother. She quickly snatched up her phone. "Gotta go Mom. Love you, bye." And she hung up without waiting for the reply. "Amelia! Sam! Come here!"

The door to the kids' room opened with a bang and Samuel Hofstadter came storming in, a carbon copy of his father physically but with a dramatic flair undoubtedly inherited from Penny. Amelia soon followed, the picture of calm beside her inconsolable friend.

"She beat me at T-T-Trivial Pursuit!" Sam blubbered.

Biting back a smile at the boy's Oscar-worthy theatrics, Amy set Josie down so she could crouch herself in front of Sam. "Well, Amelia is almost a year older than you…"

"Only eight months," Sam retorted stubbornly.

"Yes," Amy said patiently. "But she's also four and already started preschool, while you're still three. It only makes sense that she knows more things than you do."

"But, but, but…" He glanced anxiously back at his friend, then leaned in to whisper to Amy. "She's a girl."

Being the rare female in the science world that she was, Amy was all too well acquainted with sexism but never with someone so direct. Or so short.

Luckily, thanks to the Vulcan hearing passed down to her by her father, Amelia heard everything and chose to step in. "Girls can be smart too, Sammy! Mommy's got a Pht, just like Daddy."

"Ph_d_, honey," Amy corrected gently.

Sam looked to the biologist with eyes as wide as saucers. "You're a doctor, too? But I thought only boys could be doctors."

"What made you think that?" Amy asked.

Sam's eyebrows knit themselves together as he gathered his thoughts. "Well my daddy is a doctor, and he's a boy, but my mommy isn't. And the doctor who does my checkups and gives me boo-boos with a needle is a boy. Oh, and Hulk is a doctor, too! _And_ he smashes things!"

Now Amy couldn't hold in her smile if she tried, seeing so much of her husband and his fellow nerd friends in this one little boy. "Smart and muscular. The perfect man." She rose to her feet so she could stir the sauce on the stove. "Sam, whether you're a boy or a girl, every person has their own set of skills that make them special. And just because your family is one way, doesn't mean they all are. You know Aunt Bernie and Uncle Howard? _She's _the one with the Phd in that house."

She turned around at that and pointed her spoon directly at the two kids. "But that doesn't mean Howard isn't smart, too. It doesn't matter your level of education. Everyone is intelligent in their own way, everyone is an expert in the areas that they're passionate about. Never forget that."

Sam took a moment to ponder deeply on everything his Aunt Amy just told him. "I guess that makes sense." He turned to his friend shyly. "I'm sorry I got mad at you."

Amelia was quick to reward his admission with a little smile. "That's okay, Sammy."

All their worries in the world now behind them, Sam grabbed Amelia's arm and started half-dragging her back to her room. "Come along, Pond-" (a nickname he's had for her ever since Leonard and Sheldon introduced them to Doctor Who). "We have to go save Hogwarts from the White Witch!"

Oh, their fathers would be so proud.

Chuckling a little, Amy was about to return to her paper when she suddenly realized it had been a solid five minutes since she'd seen Josie, and that could only mean one thing. Trouble.

After several seconds of scanning the room, Amy at last discovered her target… climbing up the bookcase. "Oh no you don't!" she cried as she went to retrieve her daughter and bring her back to the kitchen. "Honestly Jo, I don't know if your inbred curiosity will be your saving grace or your downfall."

The door opened just as Amy returned to the kitchen, revealing Sheldon and Leonard dragging themselves through the door at a sloth's pace.

"Long day?" Amy asked.

"You could say that," Leonard said, voice weary and with a hint of frustration as he cast a glare his coworker's way. "Sheldon, care to explain to your wife _why _it was such a long day?"

Sheldon gave a dramatic eyeroll as he removed his shoulder bag. "Apparently, when attending a luncheon that serves the purpose of schmoozing a number of potential university benefactors, it is considered 'inappropriate' and 'rude' to ask one if he was born with the unibrow or it was simply the result of poor grooming skills."

Amy sighed gustily. "Sheldon, why would you ever ask someone a thing like that?"

"Well excuse me for my scientific curiosity!"

Amy glanced meaningful at the little girl on her hip. "You're your father's daughter, alright." She turned back to Sheldon. "What did Miss Davis have to say about your little discussion?"

"As this has been my third offense this semester, I am required to take her class on proper workplace ethics. Again." He sat himself on the barstool to perform one of his well-practiced pouts. "Honestly, I'm the one with two doctorates and _she's _the one teaching _me_?"

Deciding it wasn't worth the hassle to reply, Amy turned to Leonard. "Sam's in the girls' bedroom with Amelia."

"Thanks." As he moved down the hall to collect his son, Amy sighed once again, knowing that she would have to deal with a moody husband the rest of the night unless she did something quick.

Surprisingly it was Sheldon who chose to do something, rising to his feet and rounding the counter so he could take Josie into his arms. The smile he had for his baby girl only grew as he gently grabbed her nose and watched her scrunch it up in distaste.

"I feel better already," he said, his fond gaze never leaving Josie's face.

Amy's insides warmed at the sight before her, still not quite believing this was actually her life now. It was crazy and chaotic, balancing work and a family, but it was more than thirteen-year-old her could have ever imagined.

"I know something that'll cheer you up even more," she told Sheldon as she turned to remove the pan from the stove and show him.

Her husband's eyes lit up instantly. "Spaghetti with little hot dogs?"

"Spaghetti with little hot dogs."

With a gleeful grin, Sheldon looped his free arm around her and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek in gratitude.

And _boy_, does it get better.

**Fun fact: Sam's mixing up the words rematch and refund is a story from my own childhood. Hope you enjoyed this!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Okay, so there's a teeny ****_tiny _****reference to the episode airing tonight in this story. I'm mostly unspoiled for TBBT episodes, so literally if you've seen the sneak peek on the CBS website or even know the basic premise of the episode then you should be all set. if you know nothing and wish to keep it that way, you can wait to read this until after it airs.**

**Anyhoo, enjoy!**

"I must say," Sheldon began as he stirred his noodles together while seated in his usual spot. "We haven't been able to get everyone together for dinner in so long, mostly thanks to _somebody _who insisted on moving away and disrupting the fragile ecosystem of our social group."

"Sheldon, it's been three years, let it go," Leonard groaned. "Did you expect Sam to stay in our bedroom for the rest of his childhood?"

"Why would that be a problem? Sleeping in close proximity with your offspring has been scientifically proven to be beneficial for the emotional health of the child," Sheldon argued. "And the same goes for the best friend, might I add."

Howard raised one graceful eyebrow. "Your kids don't sleep with you and Amy."

"Well, uh, that's- that's because…" for the first time in the history of mankind, Howard Wolowitz had rendered Sheldon Cooper speechless. "That's beside the point!" (it wasn't, but he chose not to dwell on that). "The fact of the matter is that things just haven't been the same since you relocated yourselves from across the hall."

"Yes," Penny replied dryly. "And moved upstairs instead."

"Exactly! Like I said, proximity!"

"Sheldon, you really ought to count your blessings," Bernadette piped up. "Look at Raj, besides us all of his friends live on the other side of the world! Right, Raj?"

The man in question didn't reply, entirely focused on his phone.

"Is something wrong, Rajesh?" Amy asked.

"Ooh, ooh, lemme try and guess," Howard said. "Let's see, high-pitched voice, sickeningly lovey-dovey grin, blowing kisses to the screen… it's a toss up between facetiming Emily or Cinnamon."

Even as the group laughed, Raj remained oblivious as he continued to serenade the phone screen. Signaling the others to remain quiet, Leonard got up from his seat and stealthily made his way in back of his mocha-skinned friend. Once he had tip-toed his way directly behind, Leonard grabbed one of the earbuds and screamed, "HEY RAJ, WHATCHYA DOING?"

"And I love y- HEY, HEY!" Snatching the bud back, Raj glared at each of his friends in turn as the dissolved into laughter. "Can't a man speak to his lady love in peace?"

"So it's Cinnamon, then, I knew it!" Howard concluded in triumph.

"No it's not, it's Emily," Raj replied irritably. "You know she's at a conference in Seattle, and she's been busy all day. This is the first chance I've had to talk with her."

"Can't we at least say hi?" Penny asked just a little too sweetly.

With a sigh, Raj disconnected his earphones and lifted the device for all to see. "Say hello to Nerd Central, Emily."

After a chorus of 'hey's' and 'how are you's?' and "have you had the sense knocked into you and you're escaping the prison warden's?' (that last one courtesy of Howard), Emily smiled warmly. "Hey guys, how's it goi-"

"Okay that's enough," Raj said as he plugged himself back in. "Now if you don't mind I'd like to return to conversing with my wife-" he tossed a glare Leonard's way. "_Without _interruption."

With the entertainment of the hour now at an end, talk eventually meandered to school.

"Amelia's doing fantastic so far," Sheldon boasted. "There's already been talk of moving her up from first to second grade. And Josie's doing just as well at her preschool. Ordinarily I wouldn't hesitate to bump her up, too, but the teachers want her to stay under the guise of 'socializing with children her own age'." He punctuated the last bit with an eyeroll, but the pride in his eyes for his daughters was still clearly evident.

"Well Sam's at the top of his kindergarten class," Leonard added quickly, obviously bothered by Sheldon's bragging. "We're expecting the call to have him skip a grade or two any day now."

"A grade or _two_?" Sheldon released his breathy laugh. "Leonard, your boy is smart, I admit it, but don't forget that he's still got Penny's genes to contend with."

"_Excuse me_?" Penny accused harshly. "What gives you the right to compare our children like we're at a state fair? Why, if we were back in Nebraska I'd have you in a headlock so fast you'd cry like a-"

"Speaking of which," Amy interrupted as she looked about the room with a frown etched on her face. "Where _are _the kids?"

**~0~0~0~0~0~**

"And then you just add two tablespoons of baking soda in…" Sam continued as he dropped the powder into a two liter bottle, turned onto its head and seated on a large sheet in the middle of the bedroom.

"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Amelia asked with an anxious glance to the doorway. "I've never done an experiment without my mom or dad before."

"Come on Amelia, this is totally safe," said Sam. "And besides, you, me and Jo, we're the smartest kids there are."

"Hey!"

The three little scientists looked over at Hiranya as she sat on Josie's bed, arms crossed and glowering straight back at them.

"Well do you even _want _to help?" Josie challenged, hands placed her pudgy four-year-old hips.

"Heck, no!" the girl replied with a toss of her head, causing a ripple effect across her dark curls. "But it's not _my _fault I didn't have genius parents. Can't we do something that's fun for all of us?"

"In a minute," Sam replied distantly, tongue poking out slightly in concentration as he adjusted his new glasses. "We just need to add one final ingredient: vinegar!"

Josie gasped. "I know what you're trying to do now! The baking soda and vinegar make a chem'cal reaction, producing enough carbon dioxide that it erupts like a volcano!"

"Right, only I have it upside down, so it'll shoot up like a rocket. I saw it on the Science for Kids channel and I thought I'd add my own twist," Sam said with a grin as he added several drops of red food coloring. "Okay, I'm ready. Amelia, you have the duct tape?"

The eldest of the group tore off a strip and positioned it directly over the small opening Sam had made on the bottom of the bottle. "All set."

"Perfect. Now prepare for liftoff in three…"

Hiranya suddenly bolted upright from her position of lying disinterested on the bed. "Sam?"

"Not now. Two…"

"But Sam-"

"One!" And with that the young Hofstadter dumped the entire container of vinegar into the brew, Amelia promptly responding with smacking the duct tape over the bottle's hole. Every child in the vicinity waited with bated breath as they saw the tinted container begin to fill, yet nothing else happened.

"I don't get it. What went wrong?" Sam asked no one.

"I'll tell you what, smarty-pants," Hiranya answered from the bed. "You didn't unscrew the cap on the bottom."

Three pairs of eyes widened to epic proportions, turning as one to the deadly concoction they had created without thought or shame.

"So without a way to escape," Amelia stated slowly. "The pressure will keep on building until it-"

_KABOOM! _

The splat heard 'round the world.

When the proverbial smoke had cleared, Amelia, Josie and Sam could only stare stunned as they and the entire bedroom stood spattered in the pinkish baking soda mixture. The only one who remained unscathed was Hiranya, who had wisely dove beneath the covers at the last possible second.

The door just about burst apart as Sheldon charged in, releasing some kind of war cry and brandishing a fire extinguisher above his head as his weapon of choice against whatever had his children in danger. Paused mid-blow, his eyes roved excruciatingly slow across the scene before him, and it wash't until he put all the pieces together that he lowered the extinguisher along with his jaw. The other adults stood behind him in the hall, all in varying stages of shock. Even Emily was there, held up by Raj in the back so she could survey the damage as well.

One generation stared down the other as opposing sides in battle, neither daring to speak, nor move, nor breathe. At last, one brave soul chose to pierce the unbearable silence.

"It wasn't me!" Hiranya shouted as she leaped from the bed, took her mother by the hand and began dragging her away. "We have to go now, bye!"

Howard watched his wife and child go before turning back to the masses and shrugging. "The lady's word goes." And with that he followed with his own escape.

Both the Cooper and Hofstadter couples soon returned to the matter at hand, both mothers tapping their feet and giving the well-known death glare as they silently debated on the best course of torment, both fathers torn between anger and masculine pride. All three children shrunk in their shoes, dreading whatever unpleasantness was certain to befall upon them.

"I've changed my mind," Raj said, glancing up at his wife's pixellated face. "I don't want kids anymore."

"Are you kidding?" Emily cried. "Ruin, destruction, and near-annihilation? If we were guaranteed kids like these we'd have five by now."

Oddly enough, neither set of parents were quite so amused.

**Just to be clear I am not very scientifically inclined, so any science info comes straight from Google. If it's wrong I apologize in advance.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Okay, this is a LONG one, but pretty important as well. If you prefer short chapters, I'm sorry. If you like long ones, you're welcome.**

**Also, something I forgot to mention last chapter: this is now officially my most reviewed story ever (former record stood for almost three years)! Thank you all so much!**

Sheldon Cooper was, in every sense of the phrase, a hard-working man. He took great pride in his career, both in regards to his many noteworthy contributions to the science world and as a means of supporting his family. Any semblance of a vacation or even so much as a personal day was frowned upon and avoided whenever possible, no exceptions.

Except when convinced otherwise by his wife, little vixen that she was.

"Why is it that I let you get away with these sorts of things?" he asked as he sat on the couch, holding the remote in one hand and an armful of Amy in the other.

"Because you love me?" she replied, smiling coyly up at him from her spot on his lap, head tucked snugly into the crook of his neck and legs wrapped like a vine around his own.

As he flicked lazily through the channels, the physicist's lips gathered to the side in a feeble attempt to keep from smiling. "Well, besides that."

"Okay, then how about because we're both overworked and needed a day to ourselves for some…" she walked her fingers up his chest to toy with his collar suggestively. "Grown-up things?"

As a married man for nearly a decade and father of two, Sheldon knew precisely what that meant but decided to tease her by playing innocent. "Like doing our taxes? Paying our bills? I don't see why we can't do that with the girls present, do you?"

"Oh, believe me," Amy crooned as she leaned in to press a line of kisses up his throat. "You would _not _want our children to witness my…" she found that sweet spot just beneath his earlobe and suckled it gently as he shuddered in response. "Budgeting methods."

Sheldon broke away from her ministrations to gaze with hooded lids down at his beautiful wife, eyes roving over her face with unmasked want. He waited patiently until he detected Amy's breathing pattern grow shallow and erratic as she stared back at him before grinning in triumph and, with almost a _growl_, diving in for the kill.

The front lock clicked just as their lips were about to meet, and Sheldon barely had time to shove Amy off his lap before the door opened and two little girls stepped in, backpacks swinging behind them as they returned home from school.

"Um, uh, hey girls," Sheldon stuttered as he shielded himself behind Amy to hide his… well. "Aren't you home a little- _ahem_- a little early?

Amelia strode briskly inside without a second thought, but Josie remained in the doorway as she stared perplexed at both Amy and Sheldon, eyes taking in her father's flushed face and mother's awkward half-off position on the couch. "No…"

"Oh. Well, um, okay then." Sheldon cleared his throat loudly, tugging at his collar as he attempted to collect himself.

With a sigh both of disappointment and exasperation, Amy quickly straightened herself out and returned her attention to her daughter. "So, how was kindergarten today?

"Great!" Promptly forgetting her parents' odd behavior, Josie bounded fully into the room and plopped herself between the two. "When I finished my work before the other kids Mrs. Beckham let me go to the library to look through the science books and then Hiranya and I played blocks with Aidan and then Elissa brought in her three angel fish for show-and-tell and can I have a snack, Mommy?"

Amy blinked as she took a moment to process the whirlwind of information suddenly piled upon her. Most definitely a Cooper. "Uh sure, knock yourself out."

As Josie made her way to the kitchen, Amy turned around in her seat. "And how was your day, Ame-" But the elder girl had already disappeared.

Sheldon and Amy exchanged confused looks with each other. Though not nearly as talkative as her sister, Amelia was always eager to tell her parents about what she was learning in her fourth grade class, two years ahead of her other peers. She never withdrew like this, not with her family at least, which left the two scientists understandably concerned.

Sheldon rose from his seat to approach Josie as she munched happily on a granola bar, intent on answers. "Jo, has Amelia seemed a bit off to you today?"

Josie stopped chewing to ponder her father's question. "Well she was pretty quiet on the bus ride home. She didn't even want to play Junior Counterfactuals with me."

"Any idea why she's behaving this way?"

The little girl merely shook her head.

Sheldon looked back at Amy, who then stood up as well and started heading towards the hall. "Come on Sheldon, lets go see what's going on."

He was just about to follow when a certain five-year-old called out again. "Can you get me a cup first, Daddy? I want some juice."

"Of course." Sheldon went to the cupboard and reached up to grant his daughter's request when he suddenly pulled up short, frowning deeply.

"Josie?" he asked said as he pulled something from the cabinet. "What are your new reading glasses doing up here?"

That was enough to prompt Amy to turn tail and move back into the kitchen, and for Josie to freeze in place, granola halfway to her mouth.

"Josephine…" Amy began, warning etched into her tone. "Did you hide your glasses up there?"

The two parents could practically see the cogs whirring at record speed in their little girl's head as she tried to produce a valid excuse, as well as her look of defeat when coming up with none.

"They look nerdy," she said at last.

"But they're supposed to help you, and you only have to wear them some of the time anyway," Amy explained gently. "Besides, I wear glasses. Do you think I look nerdy?"

Josie's glanced around Amy's form to look to her father, who frantically shook his head behind her back. "No," she said.

Amy smiled warmly as she pressed a kiss to her daughter's cheek despite her squirming protests. "I love it when you lie for me."

Turning to take her husband by the hand, the couple started once again for the hall when Josie called out with hope in her voice. "Does that mean that-"

Neither looking back nor slowing their gait, Sheldon and Amy said in perfect unison: "You're still wearing them."

"Drat!"

Any chuckles brought about by the shenanigans of their younger daughter soon died off as soon as Sheldon performed his usual triple knock and opened the girls' bedroom door. Within they found Amelia curled in a ball on the bed, her back facing her parents. She looked so out of place just then, in a room full of fun shapes and bright colors when she was looking so sad and lifeless, and Sheldon and Amy glanced at each other once again before the latter tentatively stepped inside.

"Lia?" she asked quietly. "Is everything alright?"

Amelia turned over at her mother's voice, eyes glassy and nose reddened as she stared up into each of her parents' faces in turn, like she was weighing her options. After one eternally long moment, the little girl replied only with a barely perceptible shake of the head.

Both mother and father joined their daughter on the bed, and Amy took one tiny hand in her own. "What is it, sweetheart? You can tell us anything, right Sheldon?"

The physicist shifted his focus from Amy to Amelia, and though he was still unfamiliar with facial cues tried to give as encouraging a smile as he could. "Absolutely."

Reassured by her parents' kind words, Amelia sat herself up in the bed, staring intently at the hand joined with her mother's as she chose her words with care. "Ever since I skipped to the fourth grade and moved upstairs, things have been… different."

"Good different or bad different?"

"Neither, at first. Just different. I wasn't around my other friends from my old class, but I was also learning things more at my level, so I was happy." She took a deep, steadying breath. "Except, there's these fifth grade girls…"

At that point Amy didn't need any more information, past experience painfully filling in the missing details for her, but she knew Amelia needed to admit to this herself. Willing her voice to remain calm but anger bleeding through the edges despite herself, Amy said, "What did they do?"

That one simple question was like the break in the dam, and a sudden flood of words and emotions burst forth. "It started out with little things, snickers behind my back, tiny paper wads tossed at me, things I could handle. But today after school let out, I was going down the steps and I had almost reached the last one when I was pushed and I fell the rest of the way. I tore a hole in my pants and scraped my hand and they just laughed at me, and one… and one said…" Amelia shuddered, as if it physically hurt her to keep going. "She said that that was where I belonged. On the first floor."

Sheldon's initial instinct was to yell, throw something, call every authority figure in that blasted school until each and every one of those brats was expelled. But he was a man who was, first and foremost, a caretaker, so his first course of action was to rise and quickly round to the other side of the bed, sidling up beside his daughter to examine her injured palm.

"Does it hurt?" he asked.

"No," she answered, avoiding eye contact. "Not the hand, anyway."

She was trying so hard to be brave, to prove to her parents that she could deal with this, but she couldn't quite stop the sniffle that escaped as she muttered halfheartedly, "I'll be fine. You always go on about how intelligent I am, I can put up with stupid Charity Lavoie and her friends."

"What?!" came a voice from outside. Before anyone had a chance to respond, the door opened and Josie came charging through, any embarrassment of being caught eavesdropping giving way to her shock. "Charity can't be mean like that! Everybody likes her."

Amy sighed. "You'll learn this as you move up in school, but those two things aren't always mutually exclusive." She held out a hand, and Josie was quick to join in on the family meeting, allowing her mother to wrap a loving arm around her as the little girl leaned into the embrace.

"Well she's nice to _me_," Josie said, arms folded defiantly. "She sneaks me pieces of candy, gives me advice on fashion, and always calls me a cutie."

Amelia scoffed. "A far cry from the name she has for me."

Dreading the answer, Sheldon turned to his firstborn. "What name?"

The girl's lower lip began trembling dangerously. "She- all of them, really- they call- they call me… they call me a freak!" And with that she put her hands to her face and collapsed into tears.

Without a word Sheldon scooped his baby girl into his lap and hugged her tightly, lips on her head, reminding him of that day as an infant when she was sobbing over the quarreling between her new and terrified parents. He looked across to his other two girls, each bearing twin expressions of worry and uncertainty, and though Josie was usually seen as an inheritor of the Cooper bloodline, right then all Sheldon could see in her was Amy.

"It'll be okay, Lia, I promise," Sheldon murmured into her hair, closing his eyes. "We'll figure this out."

**~0~0~0~0~0~**

"How on earth are we going to figure this out?"

Amy sat quietly on the bed as her husband paced the expanse of their room, hands behind his head and haphazardly (uncharacteristically) threading his fingers through his hair.

"Sheldon, you need to calm down-"

"No, _you _need to get fired up!" he accused, whipping around to face her. "She's our daughter, Amy, she's hurting, and you have the audacity to suggest we do nothing for her?!"

"_No_," Amy said sharply, rising to her feet as her voice did the same. "I'm with you, I want nothing more than to march straight down to that school building and make those girls cry the same way that they made Lia, then rip apart limb by limb those wholly inadequate teachers for failing to so much as glance up from their schoolbooks and notice a suffering child. But it's not about what we want, it's about what Amelia needs, so don't you _dare _imply that I don't care for the well-being of my daughter!"

To his credit, Sheldon had the decency to look away in shame as he turned and sank slowly down into the bed. Amy soon joined him, and for a long minute the pair simply sat there, side by side, looking straight ahead as they pondered what to do.

"I'm sorry," Sheldon said at last, still faced forward as he reached down to lace his fingers with hers. Amy didn't reply apart from one small squeeze to their joined hands, letting him know that they were okay.

"You know how she is, Sheldon," Amy said quietly as she finally turned to look at him. "She's shy, she's quiet, she doesn't like to make waves or upset people. Others are going to take advantage of that. We can't always be solving her problems for her; she needs to learn how to stand up for herself."

"But what if she doesn't?" her husband asked, clearly distressed. "Are we supposed to just sit back and watch her come home every day in tears?"

For a long moment Amy said nothing, deep in thought. "Proposal: we give her two more days to solve this herself. If we reach the end of that time frame and nothing changes, we both go in and meet with her teacher, maybe even the principal if we have to, and handle it ourselves."

Sheldon stared into the distance as he considered her offer, and it wasn't until he inwardly examined every single possibility before he at last nodded his head. "Agreed."

Again the two went quiet. They had arrived at a compromise, yes, but neither felt as though the conversation was over just yet, as though something else was hanging like a dark cloud above their heads that needed to be addressed.

It was Amy who abruptly broke the silence. "Do you think the girls are ashamed of their intelligence?"

Sheldon snapped back to attention as he swiveled his head to stare at his wife like she had gone insane (she had never been tested, after all). "Why in the devil's name would you think that?"

Amy didn't answer right away, eyes once again turning to the front. "When I started sixth grade, I was determined that I was going to shed the coat of the nerdy, outcast Amy from grade school and make a new image for myself. I tried to copy all the popular girls' outfits by sewing my own, I stopped raising my hand for every question, I snuck my mother's makeup into school and applied it in the bathroom…" she threw a meaningful glance Sheldon's way. "I even hid my glasses so I wouldn't have to wear them."

Realization dawned. "Do you think that's why Jo didn't want to skip up to first grade?"

"I wouldn't doubt it." Amy sighed heavily. "Anyways, my little 'cool girl' phase didn't work out so well. I looked like a clown in a patchwork quilt who constantly smacked into walls and developed a nervous twitch when she knew the right answers but didn't give them. There's a reason you've never seen my sixth grade yearbook photo." She chuckled without humor. "I guess I just can't help but be myself."

"And thank my mother's nonexistent God for that," Sheldon muttered as his hand unconsciously gripped hers a bit tighter, unaware of how pleased he made his wife with those words.

"I know we've both had our fair share of bullying as kids, you primarily through physical harassment and myself through social isolation, and I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. But," she drew in several sharp, ragged breaths as she began to tear up against her will. "I'd rather my children be ridiculed and ousted for life than be embarrassed of who they are."

Sheldon stood and, after tugging Amy up as well, pulled her into a fierce embrace; head to head, chest to chest and heart to heart. "They won't. I promise you. Maybe it won't be today, but when the time comes, when it really and truly matters, Amelia and Josie will take such pride in their own brilliance it would take a jousting lance to get them off their high horses."

"How can you be so sure?" Amy asked into his neck.

"Because," she felt a smile quirk against her hair. "They're ours."

**~0~0~0~0~0~**

The following day, Amelia and Sam sat huddled on the front steps of the school, the wind blowing at such astronomic rates they might as well have been a couple of twigs stuck in a pile of dirt. This did little to bother the young Cooper, however, as she was preoccupied with calming the pounding of her heart in her ears.

She'd been like this all day, going about her business in fear that the fifth grade posse of first-rate torturers were lurking just around the corner, poised and ready to pounce. Amelia had even considered borrowing Sam's inhaler a few times, and though she had somehow managed to live to the end of the schoolday, she knew she wouldn't breathe easy again until she was in her bus and well on her way home.

"Well, if it isn't little Miss Know-It-All."

So close.

Amelia took an iota of a second to brace herself before turning to face her adversary, none other than- you guessed it- Charity Lavoie, flanked by four almost as beautiful but just as snooty girls, two on either side. Everyone else on the scene had blotchy red cheeks and hair whipping in their faces from the wind, yet Charity looked as though she had just walked off a Hollywood movie set and straight into Amelia's perfect idea of a nightmare.

"So, how's our favorite stuck-up squirt today?" Charity said with a smirk. A chorus of screeching giggles followed, right on cue.

When her parents had sat her down to tell her their planned course of action in regards to her situation, they had offered all sorts of useful advice and encouragements. She imagined they would be even more useful if she could remember any.

The five moved as one unit as they advanced upon their prey. "Still think you're too smart for us, too above putting those brains of yours to good use?" Charity challenged, stooping to Amelia's level in the most condescending way imaginable. "Your options are simple, honey. Help me and my girls with our homework and we'll be your best friends. If not… well, it doesn't take a genius to see how these past few weeks have been for you."

Ah, yes. The confrontation that had started it all. Few knew that the blonde beauty had started out just as sweet to Amelia as she was to everyone else, possibly even more so. Like with Josie, she had started off with little sideway hugs in the halls and compliments on her vast intelligence, and her friends, of course, followed suit. Then the day came when Charity approached her to ask a "very special favor" of her, but thanks to the knowledge that the fifth-grader was using the term "help" in the loosest sense of the word, and to the code of honor her mom and dad had raised her on, she simply had to refuse.

Surprisingly, Charity had initially responded rather graciously, flashing the very best of her candy-coated smiles. "Oh I understand, sweetheart. That's just _fine_." And with a flip of her perfect pin-straight hair, she sashayed off.

The very next day, the snickers started.

The girls circled the young girl like a pack of bloodthirsty vultures. "Check out this sweater," said one of Charity's accomplices, a ditzy brunette named Brielle, as she tugged at Amelia's well-worn cardigan. "Where'd you get it from, 1993?"

Considering that it was one of her mother's old sweaters from her own childhood, the snide comment probably wasn't far from the truth. But they didn't need to know that.

Drawing herself up to her full four-foot height, Amelia put on the bravest face she could muster as she once again recalled the agreement between herself and her parents. She had to prove to them, to herself, to everyone in the world that she could _do _this. If only she could stop feeling like she was about to be sick to her stomach.

"I-I- well, I-"

"Aww," another girl, Savannah, cooed with a sharp pinch to the cheek. "Look at the freak trying to communicate with us."

"Hey!" yelled Sam as he stood himself between Amelia and the little posse. "I'll have you know that in _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_, Harry is called a freak by his aunt because of his magical powers. But I mean, who wouldn't want to be able to perform actual _magic_? If being a freak is what it takes to do that, I'll be first in line at Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters!"

But his words only fell on deaf ears and glazed eyes as the girls collectively stared at the short, bespectacled, crooked-toothed of a second-grader before ignoring him completely and returning to their main target.

"Like I was saying, sweetheart, the choice is all yours," Charity continued in that sickeningly sweet voice that thinly veiled the malice underneath. "But if I were you, I'd save myself the trouble and just suck it up and do as I'm told. It's all you and your smarts are going to be good for, anyways."

"Don't you even _think_ of talking to her that way!"

The group as a whole turned on the spot to gaze up at the one and only Josephine Cooper, standing tall on the top step with arms crossed and looking every bit the superhero that she was. "Of course, that would imply that you have the ability to think in the first place."

For the first time since they met, Amelia witnessed Charity Lavoie falter. "Oh hey, cutie-"

"Don't you 'cutie' me!" Josie cried as she marched straight up into the older girl's face. "You know, I looked up to you, and I had hoped that one day I could be as cool as you. Now I'm praying that I grow up to be anything but like you."

"I've been doing you a favor!" Charity nearly shrieked. "You're normal, you've got friends. I've been helping you so you won't end up like your nerdy misfit of a sister here."

"Yeah, well I don't need your help. 'Cause you know what…" she reached into her pocket and pulled out her glasses before faithfully perching them on the bridge of her nose. "I'm a nerd, too, and proud of it."

Confidence rising, Amelia approached Charity from behind and wrenched her around. "And another thing," she said with a passion she had no idea she possessed until this moment. "No matter what names you call me, no matter what things you laugh about me behind my back, it's not gonna bother me anymore. Because until you recognize the allure of an atom, or the periodic table, or the planetary system, or the human body… you'll never know the beauty of science. And I feel sorry for you."

The bus arrived then, and Amelia spun on her heels and left Charity and her friends shivering in the autumn wind, Josie prancing victoriously behind as they boarded the schoolbus, but Sam lagged behind. He had one more thing he wanted to say.

"We may be freaks, but it's scientists like us who perform the real life magic." Looking upon Charity's blank face, Sam sighed at her ignorance. "Go to the library and pick up the _Harry Potter _books. You'll be glad you did." And with that the boy turned tail and followed his friends.

Amelia's grin as they drove off was small, yet as resplendent as a soldier returning from battle with the spoils of war.


End file.
